


Mesmerised Skeletons

by ephemeralstar



Series: old habits die hard [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Clarke Joins Arkadia, Gen, Lowkey Family Fic, Post-Season/Series 02, Pseudo-Parenting, Skaikru
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-07 00:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14069376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeralstar/pseuds/ephemeralstar
Summary: Abby hears it more and more, the way the kids have given special titles to each other in a language she doesn't know or understand. There's two that come up more often than the others, however; Nomon and Nomtu. It's Clarke and Bellamy who respond to these titles. It's a mark of respect, a mark of power, but where they fear or loathe Heda, they love Clarke and Bellamy.





	Mesmerised Skeletons

**Author's Note:**

> Ok, so I'm absolutely in love with the idea of the kids rejecting the Arker's society and becoming a mishmash of Arker and Grounder, and incorporating trigedasleng into their vocabulary. Also Bellarke as mom and dad of the survivors is my weakness.
> 
> Also unedited. Title from the Gorillaz song Kids With Guns.

There's a firm divide in the camp between the adult - the Arkers, as they're referred to - and the delinquents, though they go by Skaikru. The meaning is not lost on Abby, who hears the way that Octavia spits Trigedasleng like she's been speaking it her whole life. The Earth has changed these children more drastically than was ever predicted, and now the forty-five left standing are more like grounders than they were ever Arkers. That happens when you spend your formative years changing the course of history and trying not to get killed by murderous clans on Earth.

It's Octavia who instigated the divide, refusing to speak to the Arkers in anything other than bitter snarls of Trigedasleng, and the others are soon to follow. The kids from Mount Weather, the kids who  _ survived  _ Mount Weather, are the first to pick it up, and, if Abby has picked up on  _ anything,  _ are irrefutably fucked up.

Jasper doesn't sleep, not in the traditional sense of the word, he's up for days on end until he passes out from exhaustion. He can sleep for hours on end with few interruptions, but he never seems any better for it, and always wakes up screaming. His sentences are short and sharp on the few days he feels like communicating in anything more than sullen glares. He and Monty aren't exactly on speaking terms, but the first and only time Jasper tried to blame him for the destruction of Mount Weather ended with Bellamy dragging him into the woods until he had 'gotten that out of his system' because if he 'so much as looks at Monty the wrong way without understanding that he had no choice and that I was the one to blame', there would be hell to pay.

Jasper learns Trigedasleng out of spite, a way to spit insults without the adults calling him out on it. It's petty, everyone knows, but he picks it up fast, and he’s not the only one.

"Dad!" Abby can hear Harper's voice across camp and she's tempted to go to the girl who sounds obviously distressed. It takes her a moment to process the actual cry, however, and she's reminded sharply that Harper's father was dead, and the girl must have been having a nightmare. Abby makes her way over, hovering at the edge of the invisible dividing line between Arkers and Skaikru, when Harper calls out again. "Dad?" She says, her voice softer this time, and she's not sleeping, like Abby had guessed, she's sitting bolt upright by the fire, eyes shining with tears. 

"Harper?" Abby's surprised by the voice that echoes through the night, and Bellamy emerges from his tent with a look of worry on his face. He makes a beeline for Harper and sits beside her, pulling her into his arms for a hug while the young girl sobbed. "Harper it's OK, you're safe now, I promise." He murmured.

"I keep... I keep thinking I'm back there." She whispered into his collar, eyes squeezed tightly shut. "They're gone, right, Nomtu?" She asked, and it's actually a little heartbreaking to see the reassuring smile Bellamy gives her.

"They're gone, and they're never coming back." He tells her. He stays with her until he's sure she's asleep, and stands to leave. Abby realises she's been frozen for close to ten minutes, watching the exchange in fascination. Bellamy catches her eye and he slows to a halt, expression hard. Abby swallows, feeling as though she had intruded upon a private moment, but Bellamy nods firmly at her and goes back to his tent, and that's the end of that.

Bellamy doesn't talk about it, but he blames himself. It's there in the way he looks at the  other delinquents. He comforts them, urges them to let him take on their burdens, keeps  them safe at night. He doesn't sleep much either.

Harper had called him 'Dad', she notes, but she's more troubled by the fact that Bellamy reacted so calmly, so naturally, slipping into the role like he had been her father for her whole life. She wonders if it's just Harper and she starts looking out for it. She doesn't hear it again, at least, not in English, but once she starts listening, she picks out a pattern.

Abby hears it more and more, the way the kids have given special titles to each other in a language she doesn't know or understand. There's two that come up more often than the others, however; Bellamy is Nontu, it's a sign of both respect and a label of power, though it's different from the way they regard 'Heda' - they don't see Lexa often anymore, it's for the best, Clarke assures her - in the beginning there's only a few who call him that, Harper's one, but she can catch Monty saying it just as often. Jasper takes a while to come around, but soon the title is almost unanimous among Skaikru. The other is Nomon, and that is reserved for Clarke. 

Clarke lives her life on the borderline between the two camps, an unwilling go between. She’s the last of the group to start speaking Trigadeslang, but it seems to be a personal choice.

She talks to Abby less. Clarke is the leader of their tribe, of these children, begins to throw the language around. Clarke grows defensive of Skaikru when Arkers come around. These are her people, she’s made that very clear. This might not be the role she chose, but she mothers them all the same. With Bellamy by her side, Abby watches her raise these delinquents.

“ _ Strik won _ .” Bellamy calls over his shoulder and Harper freezes in place, a stick with what is definitely stolen smore supplied on the end. He and Clarke had just been in discussion with Abby about potentially securing Arkadia a spot on the grounders’ trade route with Lincoln and Octavia acting as emissaries when there had been the telltale rustling from the supply tent. Harper’s edging towards the glowing embers of last night’s fire with her stolen treat, looking over at her from where he’s shoulder to shoulder with Clarke, he raises his eyebrows at the younger delinquent,

“ _ Sha nontu _ ?” Harper calls back, with the air of someone who knows they’ve been caught red-handed.

“ _ Nou bilaik _ .” Clarke ordered, and Harper slunk away, and Bellamy chuckled and muttered something under his breath that Abby didn’t understand. Clarke responded, her fingers curling around his wrist, unrecognisable words spilling from her mouth with a fond smile. After a moment, he moves, wraps an arm around her in a side hug, mutters something with a pointed look to Abby, and takes off after Harper.

Clarke tries to explain, at least that’s what Abby gains from her tone, but the words come out wrong, and it takes a moment after seeing her mother’s confusion before switching back. Abby’s got a feeling that that’s not how being bilingual works -  _ is it really a different language if it’s just a butchering of half-remembered English?  _ Halfway through reminding Clarke that she doesn’t understand when her words stop short at the glint in Clarke’s eyes.

“Are you enjoying this?” Abby asked, and there was a pause as Clarke tried to repress a smile. There, looking at the mischievous face of her daughter, all Abby could see was the child she knew this girl to be. These children were just that,  _ children _ , Clarke, their leader, Abby’s child, she hadn’t been raised to command an army-

“ _ Nou _ … ah,” Jasper interrupted them, umming and erring for the moment before slotting English into his phrasing, “talking  _ kom bilaik Arker! _ ” Clarke crossed her arms, turning and raising her eyebrows at him.

“ _ Chit _ ?” She called back. Jasper pulled his mask over his face, his reply tinny from beneath it.

“ _ Osir’re _ , uh… um, going  _ kom homplei. _ ” He nodded to the Skaikru exit to the camp, and Clarke nodded back in solidarity.

“There’s a lot of missing words, we just fill in the blanks.” Clarke admitted, seemingly distracted, though Abby just filed that information away in the back of her mind. The smile she shot her mother was tight, and she was gone before Abby could ask anything else, across the invisible dividing line that seperated the camp, parent from child.

Abby watches Clarke disappear into what seemed to be one of the main portions of their camp, and reappear wearing a mask, and holding what looked to be a machete. It’s a little upsetting to Abby how little that surprised or horrified her. The children wore masks, the children carried weapons, the children hunted for food while the adults relied on rations while their crops struggled to grow. The mask that Clarke wore on the occasions that she hunted was metal, woven by Raven, most of the masks are. They’re beautiful in their own way, abstract interpretations of animals that reflect the world around them in the scarred surface of the Ark. Octavia sits with her, own mask, fashioned from the skull of the deer, talking too low for Abby to hear, but even so, Abby wouldn’t even try and piece together what they were talking about.

Even Raven called Clarke  _ ‘nomon’ _ , and Clarke looked  _ so tired _ .

“ _ Nomon. _ ” The word feels alien on Abby’s tongue, but she's trying. Clarke is isolating, well, not isolating in the traditional sense, Skaikru is isolating themselves from Arkadia, so it seems, and this is all Abby can think to do to get her attention. Suddenly she feels the hostile eyes of Skaikru. Raven’s lip curled, though she didn’t look up from her work, Octavia surged to her feet beside her, spitting insults in words Abby doesn’t understand, Lincoln’s hand steady on her thigh. Abby frowned at the girl, and she snarled.

“Fuck. You.” Slow and deliberate, she enunciated in English for the first time since Abby’s been on Earth. Clarke doesn’t get up. Clarke doesn’t talk to her much anymore. Clarke is taking care of her people,  _ her _ children.


End file.
